Sulaco
Underboss
1605 Posts
    
 | | 04/06/2006 11:23 AM |
| So we all know that simple point comparison is not always equal - a 200pt creature is generally more powerful than two 100pt creatures - but is this always the case? Are certian low-cost figure actually more powerful then their high-cost cousins?
At the extreme high-end of the cost spectrum is the 393pt Nightwanker. Could he actually be taken out bu 131 3pt creatures? Human Commoners and Sages would surely fail but what of Men-at-Arms or the might Orc Warrior? Would these stalwarts have a chance?
My maths and stats skills are drek so I can't run the numbers, but I welcome those who can to do so. | |
Champion of the Gelatinous Cube. Nemesis of Gnomes and Dinosaurs.
Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. ~ Terry Pratchett | |
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kgradert13
Sergeant
909 Posts
| | 04/06/2006 11:28 AM |
| Not the man-at-arms. Nightwalker has DR, and is immune crits. It would just take a really long time for him to kill them all off.
I doubt the Orc Warriors could do it either, butthat sounds like alot of number crunching. | |
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Temperance
Sergeant
522 Posts
| | 04/06/2006 11:35 AM |
| Well, let's do the orc warrior. Assuming the cone of cold kills off only 6 orc warriors, the nightwalker will kill four a turn (not including 1s.)
12 orc warriors can attack the nightwalker each turn and need a 20 to hit dealing 5 damage. So the orc warrior's expected damage is 5/20 * 12 a round, or 3 points a round. They need to deal 180 hitpoints to defeat it, which will happen in 60 rounds.
Even with the nightwalker rolling the occasional 1, I suspect that the nightwalker will clean up in 60 rounds.
I think the nightwalker wins that one. | |
Champion of the common Flying Monkey (Fez optional)
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Wrackspawn
ChristopherGroves
Warlord
6093 Posts
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striderlotr
Commander
3370 Posts
| | 04/06/2006 11:43 AM |
| What about 2 186 point figures??? Which the Epic Marut would be closest at 191... so only 10 points over for 2.
Marut has a better chance to hit, does more damage (and magic damge), great AC, but low HP. How would this match up? | |
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Champion of Elementals
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bshugg
Underboss
1833 Posts
| | 04/06/2006 11:45 AM |
| | He can only kill 3 per round (2 + 1 cleave) but yeah the rest of the math is right. Every 20 has to be followed by a conceal roll further reducing the percentage. 1 Nightwalker should win, especially if he can base a wall and lessen the number that can surround him per turn. | |
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Zoons
Underboss
1066 Posts
| | 04/06/2006 11:52 AM |
| True. But if you simply substitute 1 Drow Sergeant for 6 of the Orc Warriors, they'll be just about dead even.
You wind up with 125 OW's + 1 Drow. The Nightwalker cone's 6 to death leaving 119. The Orcs now need 30 rounds to kill the Nightwalker and the Nightwalker needs 30 rounds to wipe out the orcs (if he rolls no 1's). Since he will roll 1's 5% of the time, the orc player effectively has 5% or 6 more orcs at his disposal. That gives him 125. Which will take the Nightwalker an extra round + to kill. However, since in the final few rounds, the Orc player is not able to attack with a full 12 orcs, he can no longer guarantee 6 HP/round. Way too close to call. | |
Never teach a pig to sing. It's a waste of time and it annoys the pig.
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zoroaster100
Sergeant
873 Posts
| | 04/06/2006 12:01 PM |
| | But can't the nightwalker start off focused on killing off the drow seargeant early in the fight? | |
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Temperance
Sergeant
522 Posts
| | 04/06/2006 12:21 PM |
| quote:
Originally posted by bshugg
He can only kill 3 per round (2 + 1 cleave)
D'oh! I am teh SUXORs. I should know better than cleaving twice in a turn... | |
Champion of the common Flying Monkey (Fez optional)
Peter Lee on the WotC board
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forkedmoon
Underboss
1305 Posts
| | 04/06/2006 12:48 PM |
| Was one of the orcs in a victory area? 30 rounds X 5% of warband cost or 19 points a round (rounded down) = 570 victory points. So did the Nightwalker get to a victory area to offset this? and how fast do we play this event so when the hour expires we go to the score card. 3 orcs a round is only 9 points so every round the nightwalker goes down 10 points...
So many options to consider.
BTW I did realize this was only a "to the death" question but thought I go for the even more complex answer. | |
Champion of Cyclops
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frogrodeo
Sergeant
706 Posts
| | 04/06/2006 1:30 PM |
| quote:
But can't the nightwalker start off focused on killing off the drow seargeant early in the fight?
Not likely being outnumbered on activations 100+ to 1.
Now throw in a Tiefling Captain and I think the Orcs have a good shot. Otherwise they would all be scared and just run for their lives. Just one Drow Sgt. couldn't stop em - but the terrifying Tiefling Captain could! [:D] | |
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md3
Sergeant
702 Posts
| | 04/06/2006 2:50 PM |
| Why would the Nightwalker only kill 6 orcs with his cone? If he waits until he is surrounded he can blast many more in one round. Do you really think you could spread out 100+ orcs without having some clumped together? I would take a few AoO to get to the Drow Sergeant if I were running the Nightwalker.
Also, if you give the Orcs a commander, why wouldn't the Nightwalker get help as well.
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"You are not the sum of your miniatures."
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Temperance
Sergeant
522 Posts
| | 04/06/2006 3:08 PM |
| quote:
Originally posted by md3
Why would the Nightwalker only kill 6 orcs with his cone?
Sorry, I forget he's a huge critter, dammit. he should be able to cone 8 of them.
I'm assuming the Orc player is being intelligent and is playing perfectly. The nightwalker doesn't have flight so he can get penned it and with limited activations he will get surrounded.
The orcs can set up a short distance away (charge distance?) and not worry about the cone. Therefore the most optimal cone placement would only zap eight adjacent figures.
Also, my calculations above are wrong. He can be surrounded by 16 orc warriors, doing an expected 4 points of damage a round; nightwalker would last 45 rounds. | |
Champion of the common Flying Monkey (Fez optional)
Peter Lee on the WotC board
BAD WOLF
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striderlotr
Commander
3370 Posts
| | 04/06/2006 3:12 PM |
| | Well if you look back up the question was more looking at the point comparison. So if we had all the orcs, I don't think they have a chance at a solid kill. Even my suggestion of the 2 Maruts I don't think would stand a chance. | |
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Zoons
Underboss
1066 Posts
| | 04/06/2006 3:31 PM |
| Well it's not a reasonable comparison to begin with. There is a point limit and a creature limit for a reason.
A more reasonable comparison is in another thread, 2 orc Champs versus 1 Hill Giant Barbarian. | |
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Knight of the
Round Table
Thenameless
Warlord
11730 Posts
The Fortress of Solitude
| | 04/06/2006 3:48 PM |
| | I don't think the Nightwalker can kill 4 Orc Warriors per round, just three with cleave. But, if the Orc player spreads out, and gives himself charging lanes, the Nightwalker might even be reduced to killing one per round (being forced to move and hit would preclude the full attack). Surrounding the Nightwalker wouldn't help the Orc player with flanking. | |
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Sulaco
Underboss
1605 Posts
| | 04/06/2006 4:29 PM |
| quote:
Originally posted by Zoons
Well it's not a reasonable comparison to begin with. There is a point limit and a creature limit for a reason.
That was precisely my point. Sheer numbers don't tell the whole story - a 100pt creature is far more powerful than 20 5pt creatures for example - but some matchups are far more unreasonable than others.
I was curious, chance aside, if a very large group of very small figures could actually take out a single titan. The Nightwanker doesn't get any more powerful but the "mega orc" does as you add more figures. I was curious to see if it became powerful enough at the point level of the Nightwanker to actually take the bugger out. It's not an "are they equal" question as they certainly are not, it is more of a "do the statistical curves intersect" scenario. It's just a mental excersize for fun, not a serious side-by-side comparison. | |
Champion of the Gelatinous Cube. Nemesis of Gnomes and Dinosaurs.
Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. ~ Terry Pratchett | |
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The Mighty
jai
Commander
3235 Posts
| | 04/06/2006 5:08 PM |
| I once took down a Nightwalker with:
Mordenkainen, King Snurre, Fomorian, Dire Rat x9
The Dire Rats were there simply for controlling the Nightwalker's movement (or lack there of in this case) and rendering his spells pointless (waste those spells on rats?). Split them into 3 groups of three to block hallways ... kept Mordy always 6 squares away to cause instant damage and remove conceal, had Fomorian and Snurre take turns wearing him down.
I would like to see what other bands can defeat the beast with newer sets. | | | |
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Rhydur
Sneak
62 Posts
| | 04/07/2006 10:34 AM |
| as an intelectual excerise, my son and I once figured out how many Men-At-Arms it would take to defeat a Glabrezu. I think we ended up with something like 10,000. M-a-A's could only hit on a natural 20 (5% of attacks), and do 5 HP damage (base damage x crit- DR; or 5x2-5+5,but do to conceal 11, hit only 50% of the time. The Glabrezu would only miss 5% of the time (natural 1), and would kill a M-a_A with every hit, plus get cleave. Additionally, the Glab could kill (radius 4) up to 32 M-a-A x4 times (2 x chaos hammers, 2 x unholy blight)for for a total of up to 132 M-a-A (we assumed they swarmed him, filling every space so they could move up to hit him as the front ranks died, unfortunately for them, the +2 bonus for flanks didn't change their chances of hitting the Glab's AC 27). I don't have the time to recreate all the math right now, but it was fun to do. We did imagine that the M-a-As morale would break as a unit (especially since they had no commander) after the Glabrezu had killed a few hundred, maybe a few thousand if theywere defending their homeland, so it's unlikley they'd ever really kill the demon. I don't know why we picked Glabrezu and not Nightwalker...I'd have to look at stats to see hoe it would be different.
Just imagine this with the collosal Red and Gargantuan Black soming out... | |
Dragons are long, but not tall!
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Puggins
Sergeant
622 Posts
| | 04/07/2006 11:57 AM |
| I love these things :)
Nightwalker vs Orcs. We assuming that terrain doesn't play a role, and the orcs are smart enough not to all clump so close to the walker, minimizing the loss to the cone/cold to seven figure.
Over the course of five rounds, the Night walker will kill 14 orcs (1 is an automiss, and a double one means no cleave- close enough to 14 for this exercise).
Over the course of five rounds, the orcs will inflict 20 damage (80 attacks = 4 20's).
So what we have here is a tossup favoring the nightwalker slightly- it will likely win with under 30 hitpoints left, but some good rolling by the orcs will pull them through.
Placing the orcs under command by an eye of gruumsh (even though only six of the orcs will get the command effect safely) will swing the battle to the orcs' favor definitively.
4 Archmages will crush the nightwalker with at most one casualty, two at the very most.
14 Clerics of Lathander will kill it with a minimum of casualties.
Fun Stuff! There's gotta be a 15 point slot that'll do it- just gotta look closer.... | |
References: http://www.maxminis.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=7231 | |
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dj-chuckles
Underboss
2455 Posts
The State that invented Spam!
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